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Description

Collecting data outdoors presents several challenges such as varying weather conditions, lack of permanent power sources, and limited physical access for retrieving the data. This project aims to solve these challenges by providing a kit with:

In addition, this project aims to provide a solution to typical challenges encountered by most DIY projects such as:

- Ready to use out of the box with minimal assembly required
- Expandable and Open Source to accommodate user-specific sensors
- Modularly designed to accommodate different use cases

Details

Introduction

Back in 2013, we launched one of the first hackable, internet-connected, environmental data-collection system.

Although that project has been off our hands for a while, we still receive numerous suggestions/comments/pleas/insults from past, current, and potential users interested in collecting environmental data. Chief amongst the lessons learned, we have:

- From career scientists to DIYers, most users are interested in collecting data outdoors

- 3d-printed enclosures are have great DIY appeal but are impractical for outdoor use (duh!)

- Adding a reliable power source using solar energy to most DIY-grade data collection projects involves hours of research in power consumption, and hunting down additional components for regulating, recharging, and/or monitoring power

In a quest to address all of these problems we have decided to build a kit that includes everything needed to get anyone from Zero to Measuring within one hour.

Processor and Sensors

Rather than re-inventing the wheel seeking a one-size-fits-all type of solution, the kit will be designed around the existing, modular set of electronic development boards known as WeMos. These boards provide an inexpensive platform for rapidly integrating hardware and software using the very capable ESP8266 SoC. The WeMos family of boards includes a series of breakout boards for a big assortment of sensors, flash memory storage, and rechargeable power.

Power

Although several off-the-shelf Solar Power solutions exist, it's often left to the user to figure out the intricacies of integrating it into their instrumentation. This is particularly difficult when operating in outdoor environments where data collection systems need to operate reliably under varying weather conditions.

Weatherproofing

Our design includes a polycarbonate enclosure for the electronics that's NEMA 4X (IP66) rated. The reason for this choice is to protect the hardware against falling dirt, rain, sleet, snow, windblown dust, splashing water, hose-directed water, and corrosion; it also will be undamaged by thee external formation of ice on the enclosure.

Given the (initial) cost of custom injection molding, and the abundance of enclosures meeting our mechanical specifications, we've based the electronic design around a commercially off-the-shelf enclosure:

The selected enclosure model includes knockouts for easily adding cable glands for weatherproofing connections going in and out of the enclosure itself.

Licenses

All software will be released under The MIT License, and the hardware under the Creative Commons 4.0
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. For more information, please visit the project's Github repository.